Summer Institute 2010 Archives: A long train of abuses

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Paul Finkelman (Albany Law School) delivered this talk Tuesday, August 3, at Educational Service District 112 in Vancouver, Washington. In it, he considered the mindset of the colonists calling for revolution. What was the long train of abuses and usurpations to which they referred in The Declaration?